DOVES: What happened if one or more of those problems (a failure to the adjacent engine, a severe fuel or hydraulic leak, a separation of a section of flap, a depressurization) would have happened in the middle of nothing: by the point of ‘non return’ ?
Speaking purely as (regular) SLF, may I suggest the following? If one or more of those problems manifested itself later even though it was not present at the time of the initial occurrence, it would
then be time to divert. A trans-Atlantic flight is never in the "middle of nothing": there are many diversion fields. The airline even handily displays them to pax on the Airshow in front of every seat.
I'm happy with that. Flying is safe enough to allow for some things to go wrong and still be safe enough to carry on. I'd really rather have my flights interrupted only when necessary, thank you.
Rainboe: Why is everyone getting so wobbly about nothing?
Two reasons:-
- It's fun to sex up air safety incidents even when they're nothing to write home about. Some journalists even have to scratch a living out of it.
- It's fun to kick BA. If it had happened on a VS, you can bet that the media would have portrayed the crew as heroes, and it would have been a "story" that never got off the ground.